IBIB: A Protocol for Measuring Enterprise AI Systems by Serving Route, Not Model Identifier
IB2 protocol scores enterprise AI systems by serving route with reliability-inclusive scoring; serving-arm choice moved one score from 77.38 to 82.54.
The protocol has three parts: a gold-blind capability-binding preflight verifying a route can execute the evaluation contract, a reliability-inclusive first-pass scoring rule, and structurally score-blind adjudication. Its reference instantiation uses 128 locked tasks and 987 assertions over document, spreadsheet, chart, tool, and database work, released as procedure and schemas rather than an exposed corpus. Across eleven systems, two complete runs on identical weights later failed distinct binding-gate predicates, four of seven suites saturate within a six-system band driven by governed database work and multi-tab joins, and excluding failed responses from denominators changes the point ordering. Serving-arm choice shifted one declared revision and precision from 77.38 to 82.54, though arms differed in access mode, harness generation, and the tool-call parser.
Scores Alone Do Not Prove Discovery: The Discovery Certification Protocol for Auditing AI Research Agents
Researchers introduce the Discovery Certification Protocol, an auditable test framework that verifies whether AI research agents' claimed discoveries are genuine.
The Discovery Certification Protocol (DCP) converts AI research agents' discovery claims into executable recovery and feedback tests organized as gated audits. Controlled audits in SQLite optimization and virtual catalyst control produced zero recoveries in 96 episodes, with an upper bound of 0.0468. A deterministic, LLM-free verifier reproduces audit decisions from frozen evidence, giving AI research a common evidence language for outcomes, alternative routes, and feedback effects.
Understanding the Usability of Cryptographic Verification Tools
Survey of Tamarin and ProVerif users reveals usability barriers: debugging non-termination, model validation, and opaque proof failures hinder cryptographic protocol verification.
The paper presents an exploratory human-centered survey of researchers, graduate students, and practitioners with hands-on experience using Tamarin, ProVerif, and related cryptographic protocol verification tools. Findings reveal usability barriers across the verification workflow, including difficulties debugging non-termination and performance issues plus the lack of systematic methods for validating formal models against real protocols. When proofs fail without concrete attacks, users commonly simplify models, add helper lemmas, and revisit modeling abstractions. Participants called for actionable diagnostics, clearer explanations of results, visualization, and automation for recurring proof tasks.
Scalable Composition of Byzantine Agreements under Reorder Attacks
Researchers present the first adversary model combining party corruption with channel reordering attacks, establishing tight security thresholds for composed Byzantine agreement protocols.
The paper presents the first adversary model combining party corruption with adversarial channel attacks that reorder messages across multiple Byzantine agreement executions. It proves impossibility results for authenticated BA under parallel composition when n ≤ 3t or n ≤ 2c + 2t + 1, with matching possibility results when n > max{3t, 2c + 2t + 1}. The authors provide general black-box compilers plus erasure-correcting-code variants that achieve constant multiplicative communication overhead for long messages.
How an Emerging Industrial Protocol Family Could Put OT at Risk
New research shows unprotected Time-Sensitive Networking industrial protocols could let attackers disrupt or manipulate physical processes in OT environments.
Research covered by Dark Reading examines an emerging family of industrial protocols based on Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and finds that unprotected implementations could be attacked to disrupt or manipulate physical processes. The findings highlight growing OT risk as these protocols proliferate in industrial deployments; no confirmed exploitation is reported.